#aeor my beloved

[squirrel-saloli]

ngl hearing the words “genesis ward” just made me excited all over again

[addcolortomysky]

Manifesting Devexian

[sky-scribbles]

Aeor things I am so very excited about (most of these likely won't come up, but I remain excited):

Aeorian Hunters! They're such fun and unique monsters, and we never got to see the full extent of their abilities in C2. (And does Caleb still call them sex monsters?)

The Mausoleum of the Forgotten, the creepy tower that the Nein passed by but never entered! What was the undead (?) presence that Fjord detected inside?

Mutalos, the weird area of Eiselcross that regularly changes between being different habitats! The Neinnever got to go there, and I think that's a travesty.

Learning more about the Creator Hammer and its connection to the Malleus Key (and perhaps to FRIDA's backstory?)

The people in the stasis bubbles! The Nein never figured out how to open any of them, but maybe this time...

Getting to see more of Matt's custom Wild Magic effects, and watching the Hells interact with some of the more personal ones - like the one that filled the air with the scent that made Caleb happiest (his mother's apple tarts)

The possibility of finding out exactly what happened to destroy the Genesis Ward - we know something dug down into the ward and then exploded, but what? Some divine weapon or construct? Could it perhaps be the Dominox, still fighting on the gods' behalf?

Aeormaton lore Aeormaton lore Aeormaton lore -

[incarnation-of-rasputin]

Essek’s warming orb (plus some wizard angst. We love wizard angst...) for @artists-guild-of-exandria‘s SpellsnStuff project! :D

[dent-de-leon]

a cool thing to release in honor of downfall would be an ancient aeor handbook—

[vvitchllng]

“I just want to go to an alien dungeon god”

Fucking me too Talisen, how are we supposed to just do our fun little field trip to Best Worst Flesh Prison City In The World Aeor now?!?!?

[aduck8myshoes]

me reading lore dump posts from a campaign I'm not even watching: HERE'S HOW BOLO CAN STILL WIN

[mariuslepual]

critical role campaign 2 is really that bitch. best cr PCs of all time. best NPCs of all time. the golden age of Sam's ads. MOTHER I BRING NEWS FROM THE WOMB. storytelling and pure luck coming together for such cohesive, meaningful narrative. the themes of identity, second chances and growth. FLUFFERNUTTER. making my way. WIZARDS. SO MANY WIZARDS. the Luxon. Ruby of the Sea, the best lay ever. accidental piracy. a theatre full of people yelling BALLEATER. three kobolds in a trench coat. successfully getting precious state secrets with 12 persuasion. AEOR MY BELOVED. the pusheen ad. taliesin resurrecting himself. AND THEN IN THE END, THERE WERE NEIN OF THEM.

[pleasantmsp]

Initial Thoughts on Downfall

I think it's fair to assume the following so far: Trist = Sarenrae. Ayden = Pelor. Emhira = Raven Queen. Asha = Melora. S.I.L.A.H.A. = Corellon. The Emissary = Erathis (except not exactly like the others)

The gods literally putting themselves (or parts of themselves) into mortal bodies so they could infiltrate Aeor is so incredibly interesting. I love their art and I love the binary code that clued us all in to each of their true identities.

Erathis not actually showing up is sooooo interesting. Tal is playing a yearning gay so well too. We love the gay drama of it all.

Literally posted on Twitter how I was hoping and begging for a mention, a crumb of Ioun and then literally 10 mins later, we got Arcadia AKA Ioun, goddess of knowledge, my beloved. I love a goddess of knowledge and I love Ioun so much! I could go on and on about Ioun but I'll save it. I'll just say that Brennan is playing Ioun exactly how I'd want, how I'd imagine she would be in this situation. Being so knowledgeable, wanting the knowledge she doesn't have, being a voice of reason. I love it so much!

Laura is playing the Raven Queen so fucking well holy shit. She is literally a child of this era and her knowledge of Aeor and the mages of this time is like no other god's. All the times she's mentioned knowing about the mortals here, every time she talks about death, man it is exactly how I'd think the Raven Queen would be here and I'm living for it.

I have one more thing but I decided to give it its own post. It's about Tal's portrayal of Melora. I have Thoughts™

[thechekhov]

Dungeon Meshi Quick Reacts: CH:23

Senshi's need for culinary pursuit is stronger than any dragon.

This has huge Aeor vibes and I'm very much here for it. Not a direct comparison, of course, but the idea of a long abandoned city full fo magic.... yes, good. Goooood.

This man has his priorities in order. You can't find flour just ANYWHERE in the dungeon. No better time than now.

Also - aww, they got rid of the frog costumes... :(

NOOOOO THE PUBBIES?!?!??!?!

On the bright side, this thing is probably exhausted if it hasn't rested and recharged. A large animal like that needs to either consume a lot of food or sleep a hella long time.

On the not so bright side, who even knows why it's on a rampage? Nothing is predictable. Marcille is right to be worried.

Chill.......chuck.

He really said 'this isn't in my contract and I ain't getting paid enough to die'.

Yeah, 5 is much better than 3. And you've got no cleric, even though Marcille can cast healing spells for some reason.

Super not comforting. But effective.

this bridge is holding up better than marcille's mental state at the moment.........

the alternative is literally to go 'well, sorry Falin' so........I guess that's the correct reply, yeah.

Aww, he chilled :3 And next, to chuck. rocks. At the dragon.

Can you imagine? Two dragons for the price of one!

You can be digested together with your beloved, Marcille.

Senshi is NOT on board with risking his sushi fillet knives to stab a dragon, I see.

No, he's right. You're gonna need those carbs. MY question is why that bread is so damn shiny. That's usually something you get by brushing egg onto the bread, and he specifically says they don't have eggs. Suspicious....

Soy sauce. Incredibly useful to have on hand, when you're making Japanese based dungeon meals.

Aww, he's got the Inspiring Speech/Leader feat! Come get your free temp hitpoints!

Also, Senshi smiling is just the cutest damn thing.

Good timing.

What an incredible design! It's so--

Where are its wings...? It...does have wings, right?

It's about to get SPICYYYY! >:)

[triaelf9]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SEEING MY FAV, MY BELOVED AEOR IN ITS HIDEOUS PRIME AHHHHH GETTING TO SEE HISTORY AHHHHHH With DA lore back in my life, now CR lore, I'm dining WELL this summer SCREAMINNNGGGG

(thank you once again, Hark a Vagrant for the perfect image)

[naazaif327]

Questions I’d have for the Gods if I was Dorian Storm and I had Commune

DAWNFATHER

1. During the Calamity, were you physically capable of killing the Betrayer Gods?

Pelor: ###.

Yes, that’s what I thought.

2. If Ludinus was my beloved brother, whom I loved more than anyone else in the world, would you still ask me to strike him down in order to save all of you?

Pelor: ###.

of course you would. You couldn’t do the same to your family, but of course you’d ask us to do it all the same. You’re never beholden to your own rules, are you? That’s not my last question, actually.

3. If all of us mortals banded together and promised to only stop Predathos if in return you finally killed the Betrayer Gods, especially the Spider Queen, would you take the deal?

Pelor: ### ##### ## #######-

actually I’ll just take a yes or no.

Pelor: ### ######## #####-

if you cannot stay your pride even in the end times, I will leave you to your thoughts.

EVERLIGHT

1. My brother lies dead at the hands of the Queen of Spiders. One of my closest friends has been enslaved and corrupted by her. In the last thousand years since you spared the Betrayer Gods, countless mortals have been enslaved, tortured, and killed by the Betrayers. Many suffer eternally in the afterlives of the monsters you call family. Tell me, do you think your life and the lives of your “family” are worth more than the lives and souls of every mortal harmed by your siblings?

Sarenrae: ##, ## ###### ###

but you doomed them anyways to save your family and yourselves. You didn’t kill Aeor for us.

2. “THOSE WHO ARE BEYOND REDEMPTION, WHO REVEL IN SLAUGHTER AND REMORSELESS EVIL, MUST BE DISPATCHED WITH SWIFT JUSTICE.” You did not follow this tenet of yours during the Calamity for your own brothers and sisters, but perhaps Gods do not need to follow their own commands. I ask you now, should we stop Predathos because it and Ludinus are beyond redemption?

Sarenrae: …###.

3. She was beyond redemption too. The weaver of webs and chaos and corruption. The Queen of Spiders. Yet you said you loved her in Aeor, and in the end you and the rest of them spared her. Do you love her more than us?

Sarenrae: ##, ### ####.

i think you’re a liar

ARCHEART

1. Well? Aren’t you going to strike me down?

Corellon: …#### ## ### ####?

i’m a wielder of the arcane arts that you blessed mortals with, and I’m someone who might have a say in your potential demise. You destroy people like that, along with their homes and cities and families, don’t you? You gave us the power of creation and then cut us down like insects when we created something that might threaten you, when we drew outside the lines of what you intended for us to create. So I ask again, are you going to strike me down like Archmage Selena Erenves?

Corellon: # ##### ###### ### #### ### #### ######, ### ### ### ####.

2. You are the god of arcane magic and creation, you gave us the gift of creation, yet you cut Aeor down for what they made. Answer me honestly, in the present day are there things we might create that you would still stop us from creating?

Corellon: ##### ##

3. You seemed tired in Aeor, like you were ready to die. Of course when push actually came to shove you suddenly realized you wanted to live, badly enough that you slaughtered a whole city for it. I ask you now that death is once again on the horizon for you and your siblings, would you welcome the peace of oblivion?

Corellon: # #### # #### ## ####### ### # ###### ## ######. ## #### ######.

QUEEN OF SPIDERS

1. If we stopped Predathos from being released, would you let Opal go?

Lolth: ## ###### ###

i didn't think so.

2. Do you think it will be painful and agonizing when you are consumed?

Lolth: ## ### ##### ###'## ##### ## ##### ##? ### ####, Cyrus ### ###### #### ### ###### ###, ## ###.

3. Do you think Ethodok and Vordo were afraid and in pain when you let Predathos devour them?

Lolth: ...###'## ### ##### ## ######## ##### #####.

i'm not the only one who failed his siblings.

[pearlaquaoceans]

Bear with me as I write out my thoughts. I just need to write it somewhere to get it out of my brain. It isn't a critique or a think piece or any grand theories, just me struggling with my own thoughts while listening to the Cooldown after Downfall part 2.

I have always struggled with connecting to Talisen's characters. I see it as he thinks and sees the world and interacts with it in such a different way to me that I just fail to grasp what he is putting down because it is so alien to how i see the world. And right now I'm trying to grasp his Melora. And please understand I know this is a skill issue for me. I just cannot connect on any level to any of his characters because I think I just view the world so differently and how characters are so differently so it's all me, nothing on him. He's great and fantastic and I know his characters to be particularly beloved.

With Melora, and especially what he said in cooldown how Melora would be a betrayer if it was up to her and how she sees humans only as food. She is a tiger and tigers do not look at deer with pity. They look at them only as food and not as something to hold empathy for. And it's a super interesting interpretation and I think if Melora hadn't been previously established I would really dig it because nature is very eat or be eaten but it just doesn't reconcile in my head with what we know. If Melora is the tiger and mortals are mearly prey and not her cubs. Then why send anything at all to the people who have interacted with her in the main campaign. Where does the warmth sent in breezes come from if she has no interest in humans? Why does she care for Orym? Why does she send signs at all if she only wishes for nature to continue? Why not let mortals bumble around on their own and fail so that nature is left to be as it should be. I cannot see this Melora answering any prayers. I cannot see her sending rain.

With the first episode I was thinking she was more like this because the land is choked and she suffers because the land suffers but with Talisen saying there is no anger. No pity. I dunno I just can't quite seem to grasp it. I love the wild harshness of her but nature is also bounty and life and hope in my mind. When flowers and trees bloom after a forest fire. There is a hope in that and I just can't seem to find that hope in Talisen's Melora. If she wished she was a betrayer God and only isn't because of others and not herself, why would she intervene on behalf of anyone? Why would she help to bring Molly back when the body would have caused so much havoc on nature if Lucien were the one to be brought back? Why would she answer those prayers? Why would see do anything for any mortal? This Melora I cannot see her being concerned with anything beyond base instinct. I can get gods being multifaceted and complex, the raven Queen and pelor are doing that in my brain loads but then the connection holds with them and i can weave the different versions together into something that makes sense in my head. Especially with them behind the divine gate in present story.

Then I started thinking, how much are the gods shaped by those who pray? Like are their beings shaped by what the masses see in them? Does Melora find that warmth when people begin to pray to her again after the fall of Aeor? Does she soften? Or is the warmth she send a false warmth and it is not her at all? Or did the distance between them and the mortal realm once the divine gate was created, make the heart grow fonder, and she changed and was able to see things differently and then wanted people to succeed?

I dunno. I'm just listening to cooldown and really struggling with the character and it makes me feel junky because I can look objectively and think Talisen is doing cool things and doing it super well but for the life I me I cannot make the connection in my brain to what we've seen and what we are seeing. The others I can do it but as always I just can't get a grasp of what Talisen is putting down with what I already have in my hands with my knowledge of Melora and I know it's a skill issue and I hate that I'm not finding what I need to understand.

[quipxotic]

So many people in the tags seem to think Bell's Hells can just ignore what the Arch Heart said in c3e107 and everything will be fine. But it's a game of chicken, right?

They could defeat Ludinus and still end up facing the Calamity 2.0.

They could prevent Predathos from being released and still face near complete destruction of the world they know.

Because it's about who blinks first. How long will the gods wait to unleash their attack knowing that their own existence is at risk? How long do we trust them to wait because we know, thanks to Downfall, that while the Primes may love mortals as their children they value mortal lives less than their own. And from a near-immortal perspective it makes sense. Lives that are gone in the blink of an eye and are soon replaced by a near endless supply of other mayfly lives vs those of your own family who can be with you forever? If you have to make a choice?

I'm not saying killing the gods or chasing them off are either one good ideas. I'm not saying we can trust Predathos won't do terrible damage to the planet or the people living there even if the Arch Heart and Ludinus are correct about them only being interested in eating gods. Orym was right, ants can still die even if they aren't the intended target. I'm saying that not treating a new Calamity as a real threat and an imminent risk is a sure way of being unable to prevent it. Bell's Hells need to consider what they're willing to do and not do to address that risk. And a lot of fans need to think about what they're willing to let go of for the continued presence of the gods of Exandria.

It's not hard to imagine a variety of terrible scenarios.

Bell's Hells. Dead. The Mighty Nein. Dead. Vox Machina. Dead.

Whitestone. Gone.

The Menagerie Coast. Decimated.

The Wildmother alive, but the Clays all dead and the blight they have fought spreading beyond the Savalirwood to engulf a larger part of Wildemount.

Rosohna hollowed out to create yet another set of ruins on that site and the people of the Kryn Dynasty who lived there turned into refugees.

The ruins of Aeor destroyed to prevent any more information and weapons from coming out of them, but done with the might of the gods so that it takes out all of Eiselcross and maybe Uthodurn with it.

Jrusar, Heartmoor Hamlet, and Yios. Gone. Bassuras still around because, let's be real, even a second Calamity couldn't kill that place.

Maybe this is the fight that succeeds in taking out Vasselheim?

If Predathos isn't released then Ruidus and the people on it might survive. But if Predathos is released AND the gods step out from behind the Divine Gate, does everyone and everything on that moon die in their attempt to stop the god eater?

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of the possibilities, just scenarios that are at the top of my mind. And it's not a foregone conclusion that anything like this will happen, but all of these things could happen. Think about every beloved place and favorite NPC and imagine them all gone. Because if the gods come out from behind the Divine Gate, they will all come out, not just the Primes. And once they are all out, how willing are the gods (as Braius said, ALL the gods) to go back to the old status quo, something that not all of them were happy with in the first place? You could have a situation where the fight with Ludinus over Predathos is over fairly quickly, only to be followed by a longer, more devastating fight between the Primes and the Betrayers, take 2 (or 3, or whatever number we're up to at this point).

How long does it take a group of gods to destroy a planet, even if they don't intend to do so?

[dent-de-leon]

my time zone right now is wack so I don’t think I’ll be able to watch but,, if Matt answers any questions about the Nein at all during the fireside chat and gives even a scrap of Kingsley info it will heal my whole heart—

[spottedenchants]

For the reverse unpopular opinion meme: Shadowgast fanfic tropes!

!!!!! I absolutely absolutely love how the flexibility of their dynamic is reflected in the breadth of tropes people apply to them effectively!! They're readily capable of gritty angst and crystalline doublespeak and marshmallow fluff and impeccable humor and there's so many clever and creative ways to express them :3

Some specific tropes! (thank you @quinn-of-aebradore and @rainbowcaleb for the list :D)

Aeor hurt/comfort: Truly wizards in their natural habitat with all the weird magic and secrets and dangers and isolation and excitement. I consider Aeor wizard dates (round 1 especially) to be the SG equivalent of getting stuck in a cabin during a deadly blizzard, only the cabin is also trying to kill them.

Fugitive Essek/Adventurer Essek: Whether post-canon explorations or AU shenanigans, I love the idea of Essek trying new things, and what's newer than a life of adventure :D shout out to the hurt/comfort variety and especially a hurt Essek turning up on Caleb's doorstep. Let Caleb stretch those caretaking skills \o/

Professor Widogast: SLICE OF LIFE MY BELOVED. I adore imagining Caleb's post-canon day-to-day and love seeing how people blend his past, his present work against the Assembly, and his future working with students. I love the kids people make as his students and I love it when Essek gets written as a substitute or visiting cat or is somehow involved in teaching alongside Caleb :3

Essek knits: I've always loved the thought of Essek having some sort of a string/yarn/thread creative pastime, so seeing him knitting in fic makes my heart very warm and I looooove when Caleb gets his knitted scarves.

Trancing/sleeping together: gimme the weird 'dreams', gimme the threshold of consciousness, gimme the 'I know you're watching over me rn and I'm going to pretend I don't notice so you won't stop', gimme the 'how can you lay down to die every night', gimme the 'Essek reads while Caleb sleeps'. Good good stuff.

Telepathy/shared dreams: it's the drift compatibility of it all... I also really like this when it's taken in a 'you stared into my soul and for once did not flinch when you saw yourself staring back' direction.

Misuse of magic: They're wizards. They're experimentalists. Testing the limits of magic and their arcane abilities is part of their job description and it seems very them to get creative with spells both for utility and for fun :3

Timeline mishaps (and subsequent fix-its): Essek is a time wizard, Caleb wanted to change his past; there's sooooo much interesting stuff to dig through with this and so much can go wrong. Maybe they fix the T-Dock but get stuck in the past, maybe they make a time spell and erase the present as they know it, maybe they're summoning echoes who are themselves from a different point in time or maybe from an AU all their own. I also like it when they can wiggle their way back home.

-

Thank you for the ask! :D

Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme